


Finding the Family

by Ayashiki



Series: Birdsongs (by Dick Grayson) [2]
Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, The LEGO Batman Movie (2017)
Genre: Angst, But tbh I always read Jason and Tim as, Can be read as gen, Canon is broken, Dick doesn't save everyone, Family, Fluff, Healing powers of Dick's singing, It's a literal sapfest at the end, Jaytim - Freeform, Like the Minimal Amount of Angst Required for a Batfam Fic, M/M, Oops this is now a series, SO MUCH FLUFF, Singing, So I'm fixing it, Tim saves himself, Timeline What Timeline, still don't know how to tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-30
Updated: 2017-09-30
Packaged: 2019-01-07 03:26:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12224778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ayashiki/pseuds/Ayashiki
Summary: Friends are the family you can choose.But, Dick, Tim thinks bitterly, nowhere in your song did it say that this kind of family doesn’t always have to choose you.Or The Ballad of Tim Drake's Crappy Life.(But it's not really a ballad because that's not the kind of music Dick writes and, despite the entire universe seemingly screaming otherwise, Tim Drake does deserve nice things after all.)





	Finding the Family

**Author's Note:**

> All you need to know: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ddO2oMX61E

Tim is a curious kid.

(Some people might say he’s obsessed, nosy, even rude, but Tim really prefers curious.)

He’s also a lonely kid. The combination of the two resulted in him discovering the secret identities of Batman and Robin and later becoming Robin himself.

It will result in a lot of heartbreak, but that is later, much later. For now, Tim is finding out that being Robin is in many ways no less lonely.

Alfred is kind and thousand times more caring than any of the Drakes’ housekeepers ever were, but he is old and set in his habits and routines and one of those routines was dealing with an exuberant circus boy and the other was dealing with a exuberant street boy, and Tim doesn’t fit either of those. He thinks Alfred doesn’t quite know what to do with him. He’s happy enough to listen to Tim’s ramblings when he cooks and Tim sits at the big oak table and talks endlessly about his ideas to improve bat-tech and ongoing cases and sometimes even school. But sometimes Tim goes quiet, when he doesn’t sleep for days and gets a bit twitchy, when he stands in the shadow of the latest Gotham murder with an expression Tim knows would suit a man thirty years older while his heart beats wildly and his mind screams at him. Alfred’s face creases in concern, then, and he walks around Tim on tiptoes, unsure how to breach the protective silence Tim wrapped himself in. With Dick, Alfred bonded over music, and with Jason over literature, but Tim listens to punk and new age rock and watches Star Trek and YouTube videos of skateboarding tricks, and none of those things are becoming of a British butler.

Dick is easier. He has years of experience of filling in silence and doesn’t mind chattering away or singing his stupid Robin song (that Tim learned word by word the first time he heard it, and sometimes catches himself humming, sue him, it’s catchy, but he won’t sing it, no thank you, he still has some dignity left.) He doesn’t mind being quiet either and is not offended when Tim doesn’t know how to voice his worries. He waits patiently and when Tim does find his words, he’s there with a hug ready. He insists on listening to what Tim’s playing on the top volume in his headphones.

“This is awful!” he says outright when Tim finally plays Linkin Park to him. He shows Tim what he calls “classic rock”.

“Abba is _not_ rock,” Tim shakes his head.

“It is so!” Dick shakes his head back at him.

Tim gives up. He kind of likes Dancing Queen anyway.

Dick is easily persuaded to try skateboard tricks in the cave and always has time for a spar. He’s also in the cave about 0.3% of the time, because Dick doesn’t get along well with Bruce these days.

No one gets along well with Bruce these days. Tim doesn’t know what he expected Bruce to be like out of the cape (maybe he was too busy imagining what Robin would be like, with his quick legs and quick punches and quick remarks, and a laugh that rang with thousand crystal bells in Tim’s ears every evening as he fell asleep) but he probably thought something between the brooding Dark Knight and Bruce’s playboy public persona. There’s nothing of Bruce’s public appearance in his real character though. In fact, Bruce is possibly even more quiet and broody than Batman is. Tim understands. Bruce is a father who is mourning his son. But still, sometimes Tim wishes Bruce would just _talk_ to him.

And so Tim is thirteen, his thirst for information is not yet dampened by too much knowledge, and he’s mostly left alone in a huge mansion. Cue a lot of…

“Detective work,” Tim tells himself as he sneaks down the manor’s hallways. “I’m Robin, right hand to the best detective in the world. I need practice.”

Someone might call it shameless snooping, and they would be probably right, but Tim’s _investigating_ , really.

Wayne Manor is the best place for a curious child. Generations of Waynes hid their secrets in forgotten corners and hidden passages, behind loose wall paneling and under dozens of small stairwells. But Tim is mostly interested in the newest two generations of Waynes. He finds little Bruce’s diary, and it’s absolutely adorable. He finds Alfred’s photo album, and it’s also adorable, but a little bit sad, too. He understands why Alfred would keep it hidden - while most of the pictures are of Dick, there’s plenty of Jason too, and even more empty pages left. There would no doubt be many more if Jason was still here. The images are cut off abruptly, just like Jason’s life; there’s a happy child half out of Robin’s uniform with scraped knees grinning wide into the camera, and then nothing but blank pages.

Tim quickly turns the pages back to Dick’s times, to pictures of tiny Dick in a tiny suit laying limp in Bruce’s arms, deep asleep as they return from one of the Wayne galas; of slightly older Dick in Robin’s uniform practicing his stern expression in a series of photos. To a collection of polaroids showing Dick with his arm around Barbara who is still standing on her two feet, both of them grinning into the camera and candid shots of Bruce smiling a little smile while he and Dick bake a cake, read, do homework, bend over cases in the cave and Alfred catches them unaware with his camera. Tim only wishes he could turn back time as easily.

It takes time for Tim to work up his courage to enter Jason’s room.

Alfred keeps it clean and unlocked, unchanged from the moment its occupant died as if it was just waiting for his return. It’s sad, Tim thinks, and a bit creepy, and it tells a lot about the manor’s two residents. Two men surrounding themselves with the past, clinging to it like a child would to a teddy bear, the pain of it an odd comfort. It’s probably not entirely healthy, but Tim spent his childhood running on the roofs to catch a glimpse of a yellow cloak and blackmailed Batman into letting him become a Robin while Jason’s old uniform stands in the cave like a warning to any boys who think they could be vigilantes - so who is he to judge? He thinks maybe this is how he fits into the family. They’re all a bit insane.

The room of Tim’s predecessor is as sad as it is fascinating. Tim has spent years watching Batman and Robin - and despite living in Batman’s house, he doesn’t think he’ll ever truly know the man behind the mask. He’ll never know the boy behind Robin either (something Tim tries not to dwell on too much because it makes him inexplicably sad) but this is as close as it gets. Alfred and Dick rarely talk about Jason and Tim doesn’t even try to ask Bruce, but here in this room, he finds Jason himself. In the tall shelves filled with books that line the walls, in the neat stack of unfinished homework on the table, in the guitar hiding in the corner. Tim knows the second Robin had a clever mouth and a laugh strong and happy like church bells. He knows he had pair of strong arms and fists perhaps often quicker than necessary, and an uncanny talent to make Batman frown, but also smile.

Here, Tim discovers that _Jason_ was clever and studious, loved to learn and appreciated music - although his and Tim’s style would probably clash horribly.

Tim takes out the guitar and strokes its strings. He goes through all of Jason’s books, carefully pulling them out of the shelf. He reads some, but most of them he’s either read or is bored by. He still turns page after page. Jason wrote in his books, underlined things that interested him (with gentle brushes of a pencil that could be easily erased so as to not damage the books) and Tim learns more about Jason still. He finds the notes full of sharp wit and observations that are simultaneously simple and very clever, coming from such a different point of view than Tim has. He sees the well thumbed works of Jane Austen and Shakespeare. Whole poems circled in Lord Byron’s collections. Heavily annotated books by Remarque. He sits at Jason’s table and finishes all of Jason’s homework (the calculus is ridiculously easy) and puts it back in a neat stack, forever waiting for the boy to take it to be marked by his teachers.

Shortly after becoming a Robin, Tim got into the habit of sitting by Jason’s memorial down in the cave and talking to the old uniform as if it was Jason. Now, he finds himself more and more often up in Jason’s room, sitting cross legged in the middle of the bed or leaning against the wall next to the guitar and talking to the walls of Jason’s bedroom. Soon, a distinction is made - when Tim needs to relieve himself of Robin related troubles, he goes to the Robin uniform, when it’s about Tim’s life, he goes to Jason’s bedroom.

“I miss Dick,” he tells the walls and books and guitar. “I know you guys weren’t super close, but he was nice to me. Nicer than anyone else in this house.”

Tim can’t stop the bitterness from creeping up his throat and bleeding into the words.

“I know it isn’t fair,” he clenches his teeth as if he could hear Jason arguing with him. “I know I wanted this, I know I wanted Robin. I didn’t do it for hugs and kisses. It was the right thing to do. It _is_ the right thing to do. But I want someone who is nice to me. So I miss Dick, okay? I just wish he and Bruce were not arguing all the time and Dick came to visit more often. Alfred wishes it too, you know. He misses both of you. But it’s even worse with Dick because he’s just down in Bludhaven and still he doesn’t come. You at least have a good excuse. Oh god. I didn’t mean that. That was absolutely distasteful. Sorry.”

Tim stops babbling for a bit and wonders what it is that makes him the most awkward person in the room even when he is the _only_ person in the room.

“He keeps promising to come back soon as well, you know. He’s full of  jokes on the phone, teases me that he’ll sing me more of his awful songs, but then he never comes,” Tim is angry now. “You know what, Jay? I can look up his songs on my own!”

And then Tim does something he’s never done before - he enters a room in the manor that is private, and whose occupant is still alive.

He enters Dick’s room.

It’s in many ways similar to Jason’s, in its stillness and quiet. Dick still sleeps there on occasion when he stays overnight at the manor, but those occasions are less and less frequent these days. Tim can’t remember the last time it happened. There’s fewer things than in Jason’s old room. Dick took most of his possessions with him when he moved to Bludhaven, but there’s still enough of his childhood left behind - a few toys, an odd book forgotten on the shelf, posters on the walls. But Alfred cleans the room with the same diligence, changes the sheets and opens the windows, suspending the room in time, turning it into another pocket of history the house is full of.

As it is, it doesn’t take Tim long to sift through the drawers. He’s not particularly interested in teenage Dick’s forgotten treasures. Even when he does find the, rather large, porn stash.

_Especially_ when he finds the porn stash.

(Years later, he thinks back to that moment, he thinks about how he put everything back in the drawer, disinterested, his only thought being “That’s an awful hiding place, Dick, were you even trying?” and he thinks _oh_.)

Within twenty minutes Tim has what he came for and he retreats, victorious, to his room to peruse his bounty in peace.

There’s about twenty songs in the small notebook he took, in various state of progress. Tim smiles to himself, flipping through the pages and noticing how Dick’s songwriting slowly but clearly improved. The first songs are little more than children rhymes (when Dick manages to get a rhyme), but halfway through Tim finds the already familiar Batman and Robin song Dick is so fond of, and it might not be the peak of all arts, but it’s almost competent and it only improves from there.

The song that catches Tim’s attention however is one of the first in the notebook - not _the_ first one, but an early one - and it isn’t great and Tim can’t figure out what the melody could possibly be because there isn’t any obvious pattern to the rhymes, but its content lodges somewhere deep in his chest. It’s called _Friends Are Family._

“We’re not related but here’s good news:

Friends are the family you can choose,” Tim reads and isn’t that a novel thought.

Tim can tell that this is something Dick must have written in the first year after he came to live at the manor. Just when he was becoming comfortable in his new environment and the knowledge that he’s safe there, that he will not be sent away, but way before he and Bruce butted heads for the first time.

Well, perhaps not, Tim thinks as his eyes slide down the page.

“We sometimes fight, boom, pow, bang,

But we always make up

Hey man I’m sorry, it’s okay, it’s okay,” he snickers, but humour quickly leaves him. “Way before Bruce forgot how to say sorry, then.”

Way before Bruce forgot how to smile and forgive both himself and the world alike.

“I’ve got a utility belt and a sparkly cape

Saw the signal, so I’m heading back to the cave

‘Well, I’m all smiles!’

Joker! Don’t be afraid!” goes next and it saddens Tim further, this window into Dick’s mind when Robin was still new and fun and exciting, the Joker nothing more than a monster from under the bed that would disappear after Batman gave him a stern talking to.

“Yeah we’re friends but I’m still hardcore,” Tim keeps reading and it takes him a while to figure out the song suddenly switched in Batman’s perspective, but once he understands it, Dick’s lyrics have him giggling uncontrollably.

“Just as awesome as I was before,

In the darkness I am brooding,

You’re adorably intruding

But I don’t mind if I’m not irate

Because we both agree I’m great

Tortured soul, darkest hole,

But guess who’s got that kinda role.”

It’s a strange juxtaposition, Tim thinks re-reading the song, this young Dick who is so obviously enamored with Batman but also sees the joke that is a grown man dressing up as a Bat and letting people who call themselves “Condiment King” beat him up.

It’s the exact opposite of the man Tim knows, who doesn’t have any illusions about Bruce but still loves him deeply for it, who holds Batman’s legacy in the utmost respect but doesn’t want to have anything to do with it.

It makes Tim sad again, so he stops thinking and goes back to what initially caught his interest.

_Friends are the family you can choose._

Tim knows his family isn’t ideal. Now that he is almost fourteen years old, which is practically adult, he thinks he can even admit to himself that his family is awful. In fact, it’s hardly family at all.

He made his peace with that when he was six and left alone in the big house with only a grumpy housekeeper for company for a whole month.

But who knew he could just up and make a _new_ family for himself. A better family.

The idea stays lodged in his brain and his heart, but he doesn’t actively try to make it reality. Despite that - or maybe because of that - it becomes soft and gentle and joyful, just like Dick’s singing with time.

_Friends are the family you can choose_ , he thinks when Alfred nags him to eat and sleep more. When Bruce rests a heavy hand on his shoulder and says:

“Well done, Robin.”

_Friends are the family you can choose_ , he thinks when Dick takes him out for ice cream and movies and when he shows him a new move in the cave and when he teases him until Tim’s blushing over a girl who smiled at him in the mall.

_Friends are the family you can choose_ , he thinks when Stephanie kisses him, warm and sweet, when she holds his hand across the space between two swings.

_Friends are the family you can choose_ , he thinks when Kon and Bart and he sit on a sofa in Titan’s Tower and share a pepperoni pizza and watch stupid movies all night, and when he wakes up in the med-bay after a fight and the entire Teen Titans team is crowded around his bed and relief is visible in their faces when he finally opens his eyes.

It becomes softer and softer still, and Tim lets it make a home in his heart, lets it sing its song like a siren, lulling him into safety and happiness.

(Those moments are fleeting, though, he learns later, when the song becomes sharp and claws at his chest from the inside, when the family he made is drowning in blood and Tim is more lonely than ever before.)

 

* * *

 

For years Tim holds the song in his memory, but it’s only the once he actually hears it.

Bruce has been dead for good six months now and Tim decides it’s time he paid the Batcave a visit. The last time he’d been there he left in a huff and it still tastes bitter in his mouth when he thinks of it, so he guesses it’s time to make peace, even with the demon brat (also, he needs Batman’s computer because it turns out he can’t hack it after all and he’d die before he admits it and goes to Barbara for help.)

Tim walks through the manor. It’s quiet, Dick and Damian must be in the cave and Alfred is either locked in the kitchen or down there with them. Tim sneaks through the house he once called home and isn’t sure how he feels about it now. He expected the sense of familiarity to kick in, or the memory of the last time he’s been here to sour everything, but he doesn’t feel welcome or unwelcome. It’s just a house. Much like the Drake’s house used to be when Tim was small. Not a home, not an almost-sentient place that calls to Tim, but just a pile of cold stones meticulously stacked one upon another to create a shelter from cold and rain.

A beautiful shelter, but an empty one.

Tim takes the stairs rather than the elevator.

And that is how, moving as silently as a man raised by the Bat, he happens upon Dick singing to Damian in the Cave.

“...I know you’re playing but we can’t lose,

Friends are the family you can choose.

Hey Robin, gimme the mic

drop the beat, think you can handle that?

Yeah we’re friends but I’m still hardcore,

Just as awesome as I was before,

In the darkness I’m brooding,

you’re adorably intruding

But I don’t mind if I’m not irate

Because we both agree I’m great...”

Dick’s voice echoes in the cave, happy and full like only Dick’s voice can be and Tim stands by the elevator, drowning in shadows and frozen.

His first thought is - _huh, so Batman’s part was supposed to be a rap, who would have thought_ \- because no one in the Bat family is ever allowed to forget Dick’s obsession with catchy pop songs.

His second, however, is - _this is my song._

And in his head Tim knows he’s being silly, that Dick has no idea it’s a song Tim found long ago and for years used to cheer himself up, because Tim never told him. It’s not logical, but it hurts. It’s _his_ song and now Dick is singing it to Damian.

It was his cape that Dick gave to Damian. And his spot in the family. And those things, that little warm place in life Tim carved for himself with great effort. They are his loses, his broken bones, his army of dead loved ones, his headaches and pains and griefs and suffering that mean nothing now, when Damian’s voice, surprisingly melodic (surprisingly well suited to accompanying Dick’s deeper, booming one) joins the song.

“Friends are family,” the kid sings and there’s a kind of self-satisfaction curling around the notes of the song.

And it’s Tim’s lesson that he used to guide himself, all on his own, that Damian is being given now, like Dick gave him everything else, with a happy laugh and a hair ruffle.

Tim slips out of the cave unnoticed. For a long time after he doesn’t come back, and then only when Dick calls him in the direst of emergencies. He never enters the manor, doesn’t play nice with the demon brat and doesn’t let Dick ask him any personal questions.

_Friends are the family you can choose._

But, Dick, Tim thinks bitterly, nowhere in your song did it say that this kind of family doesn’t always have to choose _you_.

 

* * *

 

In the end, these things in life are true:

It has to become worse before it gets better.

Good things take time, but they do come to those who are patient.

And friends _are_ the family you can choose, after all, even if no family is perfect.

And so slowly, gradually, things start looking up again. Bruce comes back and Dick gladly gives up Batman’s cape in favour of Nightwing’s blue stripes; Damian softens around the edges and Tim doesn’t have to creep around the manor when he needs to use the Batcave. Red Robin becomes Tim’s in a way Robin never was, and he leads the Titans once more with newfound confidence when Kon and Bart return.

But it doesn’t happen overnight. Wounds might heal with time, but scars remain and more time is still needed for those to smooth over and become such a part of your skin that you forget they once weren’t there.

Sometimes Tim looks at Bruce and sees a dead man walking; sometimes Batman forgets to add “Red” before “Robin” and they look at each other across a rooftop and there are months and months of absence between them, and two silent questions:

“Where did my Tim go?”

“Where were you when I needed you the most, Bruce?”

And even if Tim tells himself thousand times over that it isn’t Bruce’s fault, there’s no such excuse for Dick in his head. They started mending their relationship even before Bruce has returned, but sometimes when Dick reaches to ruffle his hair, Tim flinches, and sometimes Dick does, when he forgets Tim has grown good five inches that Dick’s muscle memory doesn’t register yet. And when Tim sees Dick and Damian together - Damian, who still jabs and prods at Tim’s patience - a hot anger bubbles in his gut, no matter how many times Tim stamps it down.

It’s the same with Kon and Bart. He still dreams of their lifeless bodies covered in blood, and that might never go away, but worse is that in their absence, Tim grew into a person they don’t quite recognise anymore. When Tim reaches for them, he finds two familiar figures - but when they reach for him, more often they tap empty air, reaching for a shape that Tim has outgrown long ago. Tim knows it bothers them, and it bothers him too, this need to give space and effort to these relationships that used to be so simple and comfortable like a well-worn, sturdy armchair.

His dynamic with Stephanie changes, too. Of course it does - Tim will need a lot of time to trust her again - but it’s not just that. He looks at Stephanie now and doesn’t feel an urge to kiss her, or to hold her hand. The affection for her is still there, burning at his core, but where a vivid, white-hot blaze used to be, now a single ember glows warm and steady. And from the way Stephanie looks at him, she feels the same. It’s more comfortable, in a way, safer, more solid. But it’s also so very different and, much like with Kon and Bart, sometimes it feels like they’re reaching for each other and instead of grasping hands like they used to, they need to grope around with increasing frustration, because they both shifted in space while the other wasn’t looking.

And although the manor is becoming more comfortable these days, it’s not Tim’s home anymore. Tim is an adult, and he leads his team and a company and he has his own apartment. And if he doesn’t quite call the modernised theatre his home either, no one has to know. Tim has been adrift for longer than he can remember now. As more and more people start coming back to him, Tim lets himself believe that one of these days he will surely find an anchor.

In the end, the anchor comes from a completely unexpected place.

Before some of the wounds even close, long before time smoothes the scars into thin silky lines and Tim sits down at Christmas at Wayne Manor and thinks _this is where I belong_ , there’s another son of the Bat trying to repair what he broke a long time ago at Titan’s Tower. It’s different than Tim would ever dream, and perfect in every single way.

“On the left. On the left, dammit!”

Jason throws his Playstation controller on a couch, annoyed, while on the screen his avatar is being swamped by zombies and eaten alive.

Tim was supposed to have his back while Jason went to raid a hut for supplies in the zombie survival game they were steadily going through the past two weeks, but he got distracted staring at Jason’s face, brows furrowed in concentration and just a hint of pink tongue peeking between his lips. He quickly looks away before Jason catches him.

“Sorry,” he mumbles half-heartedly. “Tired.”

“Tired? Too tired for Corpse Apocalypse II? We’ve been waiting _weeks_ for it to come out!” says Jason, real outrage in his voice, as if he was a life-long Playstation fan, when in reality he only touched the console for the first time about a month ago when he crashed at Tim’s at five in the morning after they teamed up to nail one of the smaller wanna-be drug lords. They were both too wired to go to sleep, and then Jason’s eyes landed on Tim’s entertainment system and he mentioned he’d never played and Tim had to show him, because _how can you go through life without knowing the pleasure of a first-person shooter?_ No less through two lives.

Tim didn’t know that the one time offer would turn into Jason sneaking into Tim’s apartment almost every night to make use of his gaming system. Yet Tim can’t bring himself to regret it. Jason is great company and it’s been a while since Tim had a gaming buddy.

Except.

Except Tim didn’t know that by inviting Jason into his home, he would find out how adorable Jason’s face looks when he is in deep concentration, that he doesn’t like any toppings other than cheese on his pizza, that he uses Shakespearean insults instead of normal swears and when he smiles for real his eyes scrunch up into perfect half moons. He didn’t know that after weeks in Jason’s company he would sometimes look at the other man and feel something hot and heavy around his stomach and how fast he would come to trust him enough to fall asleep next to him on the sofa, and that he would wake up in the morning covered in a blanket and that tiny act of gentleness would make him feel all shivery inside.

If he knew that, maybe he wouldn’t have extended that offer.

But then, maybe he would. Tim was always an expert in making bad choices.

“Wanna go to bed then?” Jason stretches and yawns. “Could do with more than five hours for a change.”

“I could always do with more than five hours,” Tim shrugs.

Jason peers at him.

“How long have you…” he murmurs. “Alright, off to bed with you.”

And Tim must really be tired (when isn’t he tired?), because not only does he not register the change in Jason’s tone, but he puts his foot right where his mouth is.

“Will you tuck me in?” he grins, standing up to be shepherded into his bedroom and only upon hearing Jason’s sharp intake of breath does his brain catch up.

“I mean…” he falters.

He doesn’t know what he means. Or maybe he does, but it’s not something he can say.

“I’m sure you’ll find your way,” Jason says, very quietly. “And I’ll find my way out.”

And he does, very fast, before Tim’s sleep-deprived brain has a chance to come up with anything to stop him.

So Tim goes to bed and thinks he’ll fix it in the morning.

He barely sleeps, but by the time the first rays of sunshine find their way into Tim’s bedroom, he’s decided the best course of action is to give Jason some time.

It’s not like Tim has committed some horrendous faux pas. It was just a silly quip. And Jason has a tendency to overreact (as evidenced by that whole trying-to-kill-my-successor thing), but surely soon enough he will see reason and in few days he’ll be back in Tim’s apartment.

Except he isn’t.

Jason’s first course of action is to take his Outlaws and leave the country for a week. That doesn’t worry Tim, but when Jason comes back and is still avoiding Tim after a week, that does a little.

Possibly the worst thing is that Tim is suddenly very lonely. He must have been before Jason started regularly visiting him and poking his nose in Tim’s business, but he didn’t notice, and then he didn’t notice he wasn’t lonely anymore, but now that Jason is missing, he does notice.

It was just like when he was a teenager, when Alfred would nag him to sleep more and Bruce would patch him up, and Dick would tease him and Kon and Bart would laugh at him. Like when he looked at Steph and his stomach fluttered. Tim had a family then, but it’s shattered now. And Tim is in the process of putting it all together again, but it’s still fragile, not to be relied upon - and then Jason came along and stepped neatly into all those roles that were missing in Tim’s life, filled them to the brim and smoothed over the scarred surface of Tim’s life. He became Tim’s friend.

_And friends are family,_ Tim thinks for the first time in forever.

When he was younger he was proud and stubborn and he took the words written by a ten year old Dick as if he was ten himself. As if those words were magic and just by saying them Tim could solve everything.

But now he’s older, he knows every family, real or made up, needs a lot of work. So he decides to swallow the bitter pill and goes to see Jason himself.

The Bats and Birds of Gotham have a habit of entering through windows, but Tim elects to use the door this time.

It’s a good decision, because where entry through the window might result in a shower of bullets, Jason clearly doesn’t expect Tim when he opens the door and that moment of surprise is all Tim needs to start talking before Jason slams the door in his face.

He even has a speech prepared, but face-to-face with Jason, who must have just woken up and looks ridiculously soft and handsome with hair sticking up in all directions, stubble on his face and clad in a soft t-shirt that shows off his wide shoulders, what comes out of Tim’s mouth is:

“I did your homework once.”

That stuns Jason even more.

“Come again?” he asks, his eyes surreptitiously scanning Tim’s body in a way that tells Tim he’s trying to check him for signs of concussion, toxins, or any other injuries.

Meanwhile, Tim just wants to bang his head against the wall. But that probably wouldn’t help his case much.

“I… Uh, can we not have this conversation in the hall?” Tim glances nervously down the corridor of Jason’s apartment complex.

Jason gives him one more suspicious look and then, apparently assured that whatever is wrong with Tim isn’t dangerous or contagious, grabs his arm and pulls him inside. He lets go immediately when Tim is in and the door is slammed shut behind his back, but Tim imagines he feels Jason’s grasp long after, five finger points full of life and warmth.

Jason crosses his arms and looks at Tim with expectant eyes.

Well, in for a penny…

“When I was a kid and first moved to the manor, I did your homework once,” Tim takes a deep breath. “I snuck into your old bedroom and… Well, I know I shouldn’t have, probably, but at the time, I didn’t think you’d care much for your privacy…”

Jason’s eyes are no less stormy and Tim cringes inwardly. Not in a mood to joke about his death, then.

“I just… I don’t know what I was thinking. I wasn’t, I guess. I was just this lonely kid in a big house and it’s not like _that_ was new, but it just wasn’t supposed to be like that anymore. So I snuck into your room because it was closest to having someone my age around, and I read your books and did your math homework and sat on your bed and stared at the ceiling and talked to you…”

Tim’s brain is yelling at him to stop, but his mouth runs unbidden, a full on confession he never meant to give to Jason pouring out of him instead of the simple apology he had prepared.

“Well, sometimes. I talked to you _sometimes_ ” Tim adds almost sulkily, but it’s too late to repair the damage.

At least Jason’s brows are no longer creased in anger. Now they’re creased in _pity._ And Tim absolutely doesn’t want pity, but he’s also clever enough to choose it over the anger.

But most of all, he just wants to go back to playing video games with comfortable banter and maybe some light butterfly action in his stomach every time Jason smiles at him. Instead, once again he’s just a lonely kid in a big house and none of this was _supposed to be like that anymore._

The truth is, Jason’s death changed his own life (and Tim does realise how ironic that is, thank you, no audience input needed), but it also changed Tim’s. Everything was different. For better or worse. And for a long time, Tim thought it was for the better, and then for what feels like even longer time it was for the worse, and now it’s getting better again and then Jason goes, and changes everything _again_.

And Tim is just. So. Done

_We sometimes fight, boom, pow, bang,_ Tim thinks.

_But we always make up_

_Hey man I’m sorry, it’s okay, it’s okay_

_We’re not related but here’s good news:_

_Friends are the family you can choose._

He believed that when he was thirteen. Dick believed that when he was ten and he still does. No reason Tim couldn’t too.

So he pushes forward.

“I don’t know what exactly it was I did that makes you avoid me now,” Tim continues, more or less back on track now and shakes his head when Jason makes to speak. “Let’s not pretend I’m an idiot, I know when someone avoids me. I had lots of practice. Steph, Bruce, all of the Titans at some point, you know.”

Jason’s brows dip lower. Tim wishes he could come over and smooth the creases and erase the pity.

“What I want to say is, I’m sorry. All I ever wanted since I saw you as a Robin, all those years living with your ghost in the manor and your cape in the cave, I just wanted to be your friend. I wanted a family.”

That makes Jason’s brows do some quite impressive athletics.

“Uh, look, kid,” he says apprehensively. “This whole family thing, even if you could make it official, with me being dead and Bruce being a dick, I don’t know… It’s not how you make a family.”

“That’s exactly how you make a family!” Tim argues. “Friends are the family you can choose.”

“Is that something Dick said?” Jason asks, a bit disgusted, a bit mocking and a bit hopeful, a familiar mix of emotion Tim also often feels when dealing with anything Dick related.

When it’s about him, he often selects the disgust or mocking but this time, he grasps the hope firmly and drags it from the tangle, holding it in front of Jason.

“It’s one of his stupid songs, actually. But I believe it. I did it. And I want it with you, too.”

Tim survived training with Lady Shiva. Faced villains the likes of Riddler and Poison Ivy and Scarecrow’s fear toxin and fought with Ra’s Al Ghul, but this fragile, little thing, beating alive and wild like Tim’s heart in his chest, this hope he presents to Jason naked and undisguised is the single bravest thing he’s ever done.

Well. Except maybe knocking on Batman’s door and showing him pictures uncovering his secret identity.

Jason looks at Tim for a moment, his face blank. And then he smiles.

“Alright,” he says simply.

And just like that, Tim knows they’re okay.

“So, you want me to be like… Your brother? Like Dick?” Jason asks and Tim can hear the tiniest hint of disappointment and he latches onto it as stubbornly as he latched onto the hope. “Because lemme tell you, that might not…”

“No,” Tim stops him. “I never wanted anyone to step into a… role, or a box, or a label or anything. Dick is like my older brother, but that just happened. I don’t need you, or anyone, to define themselves. I just need… You.”

Tim shuts his mouth tight and rubs the back of his neck bashfully. Looks down to avoid Jason’s grinning face.

“Can we stop having this conversation now?” he mumbles to his feet. “I’ve used up my embarrassment quota for an entire month now, I think.”

“Oh no, babybird,” Jason chuckles, deep and rich like a well-roasted coffee. “With your two left feet, awful fashion sense and dorky jokes combined, that was just barely enough for your daily embarrassment.”

“Thanks, very much,” Tim snarks back and the rest of his - smart-ass, clever, witty - retort is swallowed by Jason’s chest as the other man moves in and engulfs Tim’s smaller frame in a hug.

“There, there,” he mockingly pats Tim’s head, but his embrace is warm and gentle.

Tim breathes out and it feels like he’s been holding that breath for a very, very long time. Weeks. Months. Entire years.

“I just don’t wanna be the lonely kid in a big house,” he mumbles into Jason’s collarbone.

“No one does,” Jason says and his voice is at least as choked as Tim’s, so it’s all fine.

They’re losers, but they’re losers together.

And who knows. Maybe tomorrow - with Jason at his back, or waiting for him in his home, or texting him from across the ocean - Tim will go see the rest of his stupid, dysfunctional, patchwork family held together by duct tape and Dick’s love, and start making them all friends again.

For now, he burrows deeper into Jason’s embrace and enjoys feeling safe and happy for the first time in forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo, apparently this is a series now! The Lego Batman Movie is just a gift that keeps on giving.  
> As always, English is not my first language so please be kind, but this time I had the advantage of a wonderful beta. If you still spot some mistakes they're all mine and please let me know. In fact, let me know about anything you want. Kudos are chocolate for my heart and comments champagne for my soul. If I get soul-drunk enough I might bring you more tiny!Dick's songs inspired ficlets. (Jason I think should be the next, if I want to continue in this progressively more and more angsty direction.)
> 
> Hope you enjoyed! <3


End file.
